One the biggest challenges that I have faced as a teacher is working within the educational system. As a teacher I was aware that my role was very important to my students yet in the bigger scheme of things I was a small fish in a very big pond. This being that my opinion on all things teaching was not highly regarded by the hierarchy above me. And not that they didn’t care for my opinion but rather that as…..
It’s interesting how education as I see it has really lost it’s ability to allow children to play. I began my teaching life as a preschool teacher in a day care centre. I followed a play based program and it added a huge amount of educational value to the lives of the children that I taught there. Then I moved into a primary (elementary) school based preschool. Again it was a play based program and again the children that were…..
Teaching young children I feel is one of the most difficult aspects of being a teacher. When I first completed my early childhood teaching degree I went almost by default into the day care ranks as a supply (relief) preschool teacher. This being that this was the only place that seemed to provide any immediate teaching jobs especially for early childhood graduates. But once I got there I soon realised why. And as much as I did enjoy the many…..
Being a male teacher especially in early childhood education has brought me some interesting challenges in my teaching journey. I must firstly state that I never really felt that I was trying to be a male influence in a predominately female dominated industry like early childhood education. I also wasn’t trying to take the lead in any “Men’s Movement” or anything like that. As much as back in the 1990’s when the “Sensitive New Age Guy (SNAG)” thing took off,…..
My decision to become an early childhood teacher was a fairly simple one. I knew that I loved interacting and working with young children and knew that this was something that just felt right for me. As my dad once told me, “Adam, you always loved being around little kids, even when you were a little kid.” I recall looking at a brochure about doing an early childhood teaching degree at a particular university. I saw this picture on the…..
I first thought about becoming an early childhood teacher almost exactly 30 years ago. My first inspiration came from my honorary aunt Terri who was my preschool/kindergarten teacher back in the mid-1970s. As she watched me grow over the years she began to tell me how I had a gift with young children and should think about becoming an early childhood teacher. At first, I thought this was a bit weird as I thought men did not do this for…..